Friday, 21 October 2016

Everything You Need to Know About Fats

With the low carbohydrate craze, many
people have turned their attention to fats. They eat more of it and
think its fine. Depending on what kind of fat you are consuming and how
much of it you take in, fats can be beneficial or detrimental to your
health.

There are three main types of fat. They are saturated,
unsaturated and trans fats. Saturated fats come mainly from animal
sources such as meat and dairy. At room temperature, saturated fats are
solid. Unsaturated fats come mainly from plant sources such as olives
and nuts and contain no cholesterol. They are liquid (oil) at room
temperature. Unsaturated fats are broken down further in monounsaturated
(one double bond) and polyunsaturated (more than one double bond).

You
might be asking yourself what a fat is saturated or unsaturated with. A
fat molecule (without getting into too much chemistry) is made up of
carbon atoms that have hydrogen atoms attached to them.

In
saturated fats, all carbon atoms have a single bond to another carbon
atom and are also bonded to hydrogen atoms. In unsaturated fats, not all
carbons are saturated with hydrogens so double bonds form between
carbons. Depending on what carbon the double bond is formed determines
the fat's properties.

Trans fat is man made fat. It is made by
taking an unsaturated fat and putting hydrogen through it in a process
called hydrogenation. Trans fat is very bad for your health. Whole
saturated fat increases LDL (bad) cholesterol and very slightly
increases HDL (good) cholesterol, trans fat increases LDL cholesterol
and decreases HDL cholesterol.